


Rumor Has It

by formosus_iniquis



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formosus_iniquis/pseuds/formosus_iniquis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan didn't like to put much stock in rumors, but god if everyone on campus wasn't talking about the mysterious Freshmen Foursome. He didn't have time to worry about it, or even listen to the rumors about who was in it, he had his own love life to worry about like the massive crushes he had on four of his closest friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumor Has It

**One Hour After**

Ryan really should have known better.

He wasn’t sure why he was so sure he should have known better, but the feeling was there none the less. The rumors abounded around campus about the mysterious polyamorous couple, not really weird given the small size of the school, but still. There were those rumors that would surface every now and then, that were so strange or so juicy that they managed to leave the individual departments and spread to the rest of the school. They tended to spread a lot faster when they were about weird sex stuff of course, like the couple that got caught doing it on the lawn or, more recently, this polyamorous couple that was apparently taking the campus by storm.

Ryan generally tried to avoid the rumors as much as possible, mostly because they tended toward claims of orgies in the dorms and away from actual information, but he could hardly go anywhere without hearing someone talking about it. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find an excuse that worked, that let him convince himself that there was a reason he shouldn’t have figured things or stopped himself before it happened.

Ryan had somehow managed to find himself infatuated with all four members of this polyamorous couple, all without knowing that a single one of them were in it.

**Two Months Before**

He worked in the library every day with Meg, a journalism major with bright purple hair. She was bright and bubbly, a genius who took no shit from anyone who might try to start something with her. She could easily convince him to do the stupidest shit with her too. It always started with her spinning in her chair in the dead hours of their too long shift and looking up at him through her eyelashes like she thought that it would hide the devious gleam in her eyes. He never really remembered agreeing to what she asked him to do, but without fail, he would find himself doing something completely ridiculous, like carefully moving through a lazer maze she had made with yarn and tape, cause he’d already agreed to do it he might as well try to beat her time. He did a lot of stupid shit like that, because he knew it would make her laugh. He barely even noticed how smitten he was until a grinning freshman told them she hoped she could find what they had one day.

Then there was Lindsay, he saw her close to everyday as well. He’d changed his major so many times that when he finally settled on theatre he found himself stuck, as a junior, in a class full of freshmen. Lindsay had plopped down in the seat beside him in his first class on the first day; and before he could even say anything, she let him know that she was really saving him, cause a guy who was clearly older and as hot as he was, well he was definitely in danger of harassment by overbearing theatre freshmen. When she followed him to his next class, he’d been a little confused and then after that class to his third, he was actually a little concerned she was stalking him. Enough that he actually asked to see her schedule when she sat down beside him for the third time. He’d been surprised to find they shared most of their classes, with a few exceptions for her gen eds and his upper level courses. She joked that they could just share the same desk to leave a spot for another student. He quickly got used to seeing the girl every day, she had a sense of humor he just clicked with, and found himself really missing the redhead on the few days she would miss class and had often caught himself turning to tell her something in classes he didn’t even have with her.

Michael and Gavin were something else altogether. He heard Michael before he ever met him, the shouting through their shared wall had driven him to distraction as he tried to finish his reading for the next day. The swearing and shouting had ended before Ryan could get up to tell whoever it was to shut up. The scene was forgotten almost as soon as it went away as he went back to his reading, Ryan definitely didn’t connect the vinegar filled shouting with the freckle faced kid in the beanie that he rode down with in the elevator going to class. The vitriol he heard being spewed semi-regularly through his wall couldn’t possibly come from the kid with the dimple whose head was usually bobbing to whatever was coming through his headphones.

Gavin he met through his roommate Geoff, the kid was like Geoff’s younger brother, and he met him as the two moved themselves in. Gavin was lucky and had managed to get into the upperclassmen dorms despite only being a freshman. Geoff had let him know it too, as he told Gavin that if he was in the freshman dorms he would have been moving in by himself. Gavin was also next door to Ryan, and his accent was the only way he’d been able to rule out Gavin as the guy who’d been raging next door. He’d also heard what Gavin sounded like while yelling, when Gav had to deal with Geoff making him carry all of Geoff’s shit into the room while he lounged on the bed and tried to trip him, and it sounded much more like a squawk.

Ryan saw them both later, Gavin dragging the boy from the elevator along behind him through the cafeteria. Gavin dragged him up to the table that Ryan and Geoff were sharing in the dining hall, and Ryan almost assumed they were dating with the way he was letting Gavin lead him around by the hand. It wasn’t until the end of dinner that he learned that Michael was Gavin’s roommate, and hearing that was enough to remind Ryan of the shouting from next door, he gave them hell for it. As an apology they invited him over to game, he was fascinated with watching the two play off of each other. Gavin seemed to like riling Michael up to see him explode as much as he did playing the game, and even as Michael got more and more frustrated with his roommate he kept smiling. He reached a point where he was spending almost as much time in their room as his own. He liked playing shitty steam games with Michael, and Gavin liked to ask him weird hypotheticals while they studied. Ryan didn’t try studying alone with Gavin much anymore, not after he stormed out on Gavin after a twenty minute argument about coin flips. He kept finding himself coming back though, something about the two, no matter what they did to piss him off he was usually back in their room a few hours later.

Four different people that, with the exception of Michael and Gavin, he had never seen in the same place or at the same time as one another, and Ryan found himself besotted with all of them.

**One and a Half Months Before**

Jack was the one who always brought it up. They shared one of the few classes that Ryan didn’t have with Lindsay, and he was one of the few people Ryan had befriended in his time at school. “You hear about the Freshmen Foursome on campus?”

Ryan was hardly listening, it was all anyone was talking about right now, a month into the semester he would have thought they’d have something better to gossip about. “They’re freshmen now?” he asked if only to keep the conversation going while they finished their lab, “Last I’d heard it was a student-teacher sex dungeon.”

He smirked as he made note of both Jack’s reaction and the reaction of the experiment in front of them, “Ryan, stop being fucking creepy.” He took a second to shake away whatever thoughts that Ryan’s innocent comment had created, “The new rumor is that it’s four freshmen, two guys and two girls.”

“And next week it’ll be four sorority girls, because these rumors are coming straight from porn hub video descriptions.”

Jack huffed but Ryan was not going to give these rumors anything more than his idle curiosity, unlike Jack and the rest of campus. “Caleb said he saw them out in town, like on a date.”

“Caleb says he sees a lot of shit. This was probably just a double date and he’s got orgy on the brain, just like every other guy on campus.”

“Double dates don't switch dates halfway through the meal.”

“Well I mean, it could be like a wife swap situation, or swingers, or Caleb could have no clue what he’s talking about.”

“What about you and that girl from the library?” Jack asked, changing the subject probably because he knew there wasn’t anything else he could say to change Ryan’s opinion on this

“Meg?” he asked pretending for a second that he didn’t immediately know who Jack was talking about. “She’s way out of my league, she probably has a harem of people waiting to do her bidding.”

“She’s got bright hair, right? Maybe she does, Caleb said one of the girls had colored hair, like a purple color.”

Ryan couldn’t help but roll his eyes as Jack found a way to bring the conversation back to this couple, “So does half the campus, it is college, it’s not that weird to see fluorescent hair.”

He was saved from whatever Jack’s next response was when their experiment spontaneously combusted, something it was supposed to do, but still something that required their immediate attention.

It wasn’t the first time Jack had tried to pry into Ryan’s personal life and spread rumors of the mysterious couple. Last time, Ryan had turned to make a joke to Lindsay, only to find a different red head in her place. Jack had teased him mercilessly about the disappointed look on his face, “Probably for the best,” he had said, “Kdin said she’s dating like three people.”

Ryan hadn’t done much to try to defend her honor, really, if Lindsay were dating anyone, especially three people, he would know about it.

-

If he’d been paying a little more attention maybe he would have. It was a little embarrassing when he looked back on it, that he didn’t figure it out on his own, with as much time as he spent with all of them and how little they were doing to hide it.

**One Month Before**

“Is that a hickey?” he asked Gavin suddenly one day as they were crammed around the lads’ TV, screwing around in GTA. He felt a twinge of something that wasn’t quite jealousy at the sight of it, almost like disappointment that the crush he had was likely not reciprocated and maybe a small part of him that wondered just how someone got squirmy Gavin to sit still long enough to mark him up like that.

Gavin yelped, slapping a hand to the offending mark, and Michael laughed as he killed Gavin’s now frozen character on screen. “Gavvy, Ryan sounds surprised that you’re getting some.” Michael poked at the hand that was trying to cover the bruising just under Gavin’s jaw and Ryan felt like he should make some sort of apology if only to stave off Gavin’s whining.

“Just didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” he said.

“I’m plenty alluring Ryan,” Gavin said, apparently assuming that his surprise came from a disbelief that he could find someone in the first place rather than upset that it hadn’t been him making the mark. “You’d be surprised who I’ve managed to bag.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Michael said, a strange look on his face and Ryan wondered if he wasn’t the only one who was a little jealous. “I wanna do this heist not listen to Gavin talk about his fucking conquests.”

Ryan’s question was quickly forgotten in the barrage of virtual bullets and complaining about their random fourth teammate.

-

It was days after that, the entire situation almost forgotten about and Ryan had been following behind Michael. He wasn’t really paying attention as he was talking about some movie that the freshman had talked him into watching, and Michael had wanted to change out of his GameStop uniform shirt before dinner. Ryan had followed behind not really thought about what that meant as he was trying to make his point.

"It’s not like it was a _bad_ movie," he was saying, "but the acting was like an amateur theatre performance at best and I don't even want to think about the special effects."

"It’s indie Ry-bread," Michael said again, that'd been his argument the entire time they'd been having this conversation, "it’s not supposed to be good."

"Indie doesn't mean bad, it means independent."

"Indie _horror_ movies are supposed to be bad," Michael said shaking his head, "it’s just not worth watching if there’s not shitty acting and enough blood to give Tarantino a hard on, Turney agrees with me."

Ryan was seconds away from asking what he meant by that. He didn't even know Michael knew Meg let alone knew her well enough to bring her up in this conversation, but he got distracted as Michael pulled off the shirt he'd been wearing and Ryan caught sight of a long row bruises that trailed down well defined hip bones.

Michael noticed the staring, or maybe it was the silence, and as a new shirt covered up the red and purple marks a sharp but teasing voice said, "My eyes are up here, Haywood."

He didn't want to think about what color his face was but he could feel the heat creeping up the back of his neck. He couldn't even come up with something to stutter out as an apology, he'd been caught staring and he really didn't have an excuse. Michael saved him from embarrassing himself further by trying to come up with one, "C'mon dickhead, I'm starving and Geoff’ll bitch if we're late."

-

He didn’t even see Meg’s until close to the end of their shift. Today was a study day, designated by Meg this time so she could study for a test in her broadcasting class. Normally, it was Ryan calling for a study day, so Meg wouldn’t talk him into doing something stupid like set up a beer pong game with the mystery liquids in the staff fridge.

He didn’t catch sight of it until after she sat up, handed him a stack of flash cards, and asked him to help her study. As he asked her the questions, she flipped her hair back over her shoulder and he found himself fixated on a purple bruise on her collar bone that had been hidden by her purple hair.

He missed her answer to whatever question he’d asked her, he could feel her eyes on him and wondered if she could feel his on her. “Is it that obvious?”

“What?” he asked, and it took a lot more effort than he’d like to admit to keep from asking if she was talking about his obvious crush on her.

“Don’t fuck with me, Ry, I can feel you staring. I told her to keep it out of sight, _I_ have a job unlike some people.”

“No, no ‘s good, fine,” he lied, wondering how on earth he’d managed to fall for three different people who were in a relationship already, and with people who were into leaving such possessive marks.

He asked the next question on the card in his hand, to avoid the line of questioning that was soon to follow. She didn’t say anything and he tried to stop looking at her collarbone.

-

He really thought he was safe with Lindsay. The law of averages had to be on his side, the redhead he sat beside every day had made no indication of being in a relationship of any kind, not that any of the others had either until he couldn’t stop noticing hickeys.

He was floored when she sat down beside him in the theatre and had a necklace of the dark marks at all angles on her neck. He couldn’t even pretend to keep his staring subtle.

“Fucking ridiculous, right?” she said, “Apparently _I_ got carried away last time and this is revenge.”

He could only manage to nod, his brain was trying to process all of the things he’d learned in that last sentence. There had been a last time, _Lindsay_ was a biter, and whoever she was with had a sense of revenge that he kind of admired.

“They better hope I can cover these,” she continued, “I’ve got an audition tonight.”

“Do you know Meg? I’m sure she could help with the make-up,” he said.

She looked at him strangely, like he’d said something she couldn’t quite make sense of. “Yeah, I know Meg.”

Their conversation was cut short by the arrival of their professor. Ryan never did figure out what that look meant.

**Two Weeks Before**

He definitely should have figured it out with the letterman. Hindsight really had a way of making things like that obvious though.

Lindsay wore it first. The bright purple jacket like a beacon in the middle of the class he was almost late for.

“Little late in the year to still be repping your high school,” he said sliding into his seat behind her.

“Fuck off,” she said, “it’s cold.”

“It’s Texas, it doesn’t get cold.”

“You’re gonna say that while you’re wearing a goddamn beanie.”

“Touché.”

“Damn right touché. Don’t be a fucking hypocrite Ryan, you know what they say about hypocrites.”

“No, what do they say?” he couldn’t hide the amused note in his voice, just like he couldn’t help but note that there wasn’t a name on the back of her jacket. He didn’t know when he’d picked up the habit, but he’d started noticing things like that, as he tried to find a hint of a mystery date.

“They say that they have to find a new seat next to a gorgeous redhead in a kickass letterman.”

-

Meg was practically swaddled in a jacket that was identical to Lindsay’s the next day.”

“Is there something I’m missing?” he asked.

“What do you mean, Ry?”

“Nothing,” he said, noticing that her jacket was also missing a name from the back, “just didn’t realize that’s where you went to high school.”

She smiled, “Yeah, there’s a couple of us kicking around campus. Who cares, I have this video I have to show you.”

-

He was honestly spending about as much time in Michael and Gavin’s room as he was in his own, so he should have seen the brightly colored jacket that was hanging over the back of his chair before now. Meg _had_ said there were a couple of kids from her high school kicking around, and that would explain how Michael knew her.

He’d expected Michael of all people to have his name embroidered on the back though. “Does everybody have this damn jacket?”

They were _supposed_ to be studying, at Ryan’s own instance but the sudden outburst had Michael looking away from whatever he was doing on his DS. “Yea, I guess. Gav is that yours or mine?”

“I didn’t letter, you dope,” Gavin said, not looking up from whatever book he was reading for film.

“Neither did I, but I still got the jacket, it gets all the ladies.” Gavin snorted and Ryan found himself laughing a little too at the absurd claim. “Whatever,” Michael said a little louder to cover his bruised ego, “I’m not the one who wears it all the time.”

“ _I’m_ not the one who’s been wearing it all this week.”

Things got quiet for a while when Michael asked, “Why’re you so interested Ryan.”

“Just seem to be seeing it around a lot lately.”

“Well some of us had to go to an in state school, can’t all come to Texas from the ATL, Ryan.”

“Michael, you’re from Jersey,” Gavin said.

“I’ve been here longer than you, dickhead. Gavin, I don’t know if you know this but you’re British.”

“What,” Ryan said, “I just thought he had a stroke or something.”

That conversation, and any studying Ryan was getting done, ended as Gavin threw himself into Michael’s lap. He laughed along with them as their wrestling sent the falling from the chair Michal was sitting in and onto the floor.

**Now**

Those were just the two biggest clues, the neon lights that should have said ‘get a fucking clue genius,’ the things that should have smacked him in the face as they flew past him. He couldn’t even imagine the smaller things he’d missed in his own obliviousness, when it took it all being shoved in his face for him to figure it out.

“Go wake up Team Nice Dynamite,” Geoff ordered, “if those fuckers think I’m gonna wait around on them all day they’ve got another thing coming. It’s the last free weekend before deadlines start fucking up everybody’s shit.”

Ryan rolled his eyes but went next door to get them before Geoff left for the river without them. He didn’t bother to knock, knowing that Michael and Gavin never locked their door at night.

He assumed the worst he could find was the two of them in varying states of undress, and it really wouldn’t be the first time it’d happened. He really hadn’t been that far off.

He’d shoved open the door, already half-finished telling them that Geoff was going to leave without them. It wasn’t hard to tell that there were four bodies squeezed together in the two beds. When he saw a familiar purple head poke up from the bed, he left the room quickly before she could see he was there. He told Geoff they were up and that he suddenly wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t entirely a lie.

Everything he thought he’d learned and figured out about the last few months was turned on its ear. From the jacket and the hickeys to how Michael and Gavin had their fucking room arranged, that one made him feel especially stupid but he’d just assumed that the kept their beds pushed together in the corner to free up the extra space they used to game.

The Freshmen Foursome was real, and he loathed to admit it, but Jack had been right that Meg and Lindsay were both a part of it.

Ryan wasn't pouting though, that was something children did when they got their favorite toy taken away or what Gavin did when Michael was mean to him. No, Ryan was doing what any sensible adult would do when they got news that rocked their entire world, which was isolate himself and try to figure out just how this happened. Because there were _clearly_ signs that this was going on around him, and they'd all passed him by in favor of whatever maintaining whatever hormone fueled daze had kept him so infatuated with the four of them in the first place.

He was talking his own time was the point, maybe it was to lick his wounds or to discard whatever fantasy he'd pieces together about the four of them in favor of stitching together a more realistic... reality. It’s not like he could feel heartbroken for a relationship that never was, they were still friends that hadn't changed, hell they probably didn't even realize something had changed for Ryan.

Cause, well, only in his wettest of dreams had the idea of him with the four of them, all four of them, even come up; and, okay, maybe in a daydream or two. It wasn't his fault that it was so easy to imagine how Lindsay and Gavin could team up to annoy Michael or how well Michael and Meg's senses of humor would mesh, clearly it hadn't been that hard for the four of them to imagine either. It took a level of familiarity, that didn't come from dating the first couple months of freshman year, to cuddle yourself up to someone, or three someone's, enough to fit on two conjoined twin beds. This had been going on for much longer than Ryan had been involved in any of their lives, any flirting, or whatever he thought was going on, was clearly in his own head.

Avoidance, that was how he planned to fix all of this. Fix might be a strong word, but it was definitely how he planned to give himself some space to get over the little crush he had. The crush that had somehow managed to magnify as he spent his weekend locked in his room trying to wrap his head around the four of them being together. Absence, it seemed, didn't make the heart grow fonder so much as 48 hours thinking about everything you liked about them in the first place, and how that would translate into a polyamorous relationship, made the heart ask why the fuck you were torturing yourself like this.

It was actually harder than he thought to avoid them too. The weekend had been one thing, Saturday they'd all gone with Geoff to the river and had been gone all day, and the next day he just boarded himself in, he had enough shitty food and diet coke to last him a little while. The school week was a little harder. Michael and Gavin were next door, so he could hear when they were coming and going, letting him escape his room when he needed to without being caught by one of the two of them, but he had all three of his classes on Monday with Lindsay and he had work after that with Meg.

He felt like an asshole as he called in sick with Gus, letting him know that he wouldn’t be able to work as he pulled his blanket over his head and continued his wallowing in bed. Skipping his classes for the day, well, that was a given.

Tuesday he was late. Hiding in his room until after he heard both the lads next door leave for their classes, and then waiting a couple extra minutes to make sure he wouldn’t run into them in the elevator or the dorm lobby. He slipped into lab, ignoring the looks he got from Jack and the professor, and pulled his things out for the class.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you?” Jack asked, once their instructor finished explaining, and let them get to the lab for the day.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, I overslept,” the lie slipped of his tongue easily, but it felt heavy as it fell from his lips. Jack would probably still believe him, it was easier than it should be to lie to his friend, and he usually didn’t say anything about it unless Ryan fumbled his words.

“Geoff says you’ve been doing a lot of that."

"Yeah, well what does he know?"

"He is your roommate."

"I'm fine, Jack."

"If you need to talk about it," he offered.

But Ryan really didn't want to talk, he really just wanted this lab to be over so he could go back to his room and wallow a little more. He thought he was entitled to at least another day of moping before he had to get over his teen angst bullshit and find a way not to pine over the Freshman Foursome any more.

Lab let out late, because of course it did when Ryan didn't want to be there, and he decided that he needed lunch before he hid in his room for the rest of the night. He saw a familiar head in front of him as he waited in the line to grab his food, and he decided if he was going to wallow in self-pity for most of the night, he should at least try being social first. It was something he could throw in his roommate’s face, at least, if Geoff tried to dad out on him.

"Hi Mica," he said, smiling a little as she startled.

"Ryan, you scared the shit out of me." She chastised, Mica was another theatre freshman, one of the few aside from Lindsay that Ryan actually got along with.

"You changed your hair," he said, conversationally, it was pretty hard to miss that the purple ends she'd had in her hair earlier in the semester were gone.

"Well it's audition season, you know how it is. We can't all have the gorgeous purple hair your girlfriend has and still get cast."

"She's not my girlfriend," he said, trying to ignore the lurch his stomach gave.

Mica looked skeptical, "You might wanna tell them that then."

She said them, it was a word his brain had been latching onto a lot recently, so he was sure he hadn't misheard her, though he definitely missed whatever she had said after that. He didn’t know what he thought that meant, there was a possibility Mica knew, Ryan knew she was friends with both the lads, as well as Lindsay, she’d come over and gamed with them a couple of times before. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to stand in line and debate with himself as he deconstructed her word choice like he was writing an English essay, he didn’t know what he wanted to do now, but he did know suddenly wasn't very hungry anymore. "I'll see you later, Mica."

"You haven't even ordered yet," she said, raising her voice to be heard as he started to leave the food court.

He didn't bother to answer, he wasn't where he was going yet, though he found himself being carried toward his room. He wanted to think about it, or maybe he wanted to stop thinking about it, or he could just take a nap, because really, all this romance bullshit had his insomnia acting up.

-

He must have actually fallen asleep when he got back to his room, because a loud banging woke him up. He was disoriented enough that the only thing he was sure about was that he'd been asleep for a while, he didn't even think to check the peephole to see who was at his door. He looked down to find an annoyed looking Meg looking up at him. "You've been avoiding us."

He barely opened his mouth to respond before she was holding up a finger to silence him again. "No, you have, don't try and deny it. We're getting dinner, the five of us, and we're going to have a long conversation about communication and what it means to be in a relationship with more than one person. Then we're gonna figure out how much contortion is required to fit five people in Michael and Gavin's beds."

Ryan nodded, because that's what you did when Meg told you were doing something, you agreed. She smiled, and it was blinding, and it reminded him why exactly you did what Meg asked you to do because then she smiled at you like that. "Great, c'mon the guys are waiting."

He eagerly followed behind her, he had done more than enough waiting for this. Looks like the foursome was about to become a fivesome, let’s see what rumors they had to start about that.

**Author's Note:**

> Tried something kinda new with the formatting of this, let me know what you think. 
> 
> As always you can follow me on tumblr, [formosusiniquis](http://formosusiniquis.tumblr.com/), I post all my stuff there and sometimes talk about fandom things and take prompts from people.


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